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New York, NY
-
12 Sep 2002:
IBM today announced it has acquired all the outstanding shares of Holosofx, Inc., a privately-held, California-based provider of business integration software. .

The acquisition closed yesterday. Financial details were not disclosed. Holosofx's operations will be integrated immediately with IBM Software Group and Holosofx products are available today from IBM.

IBM acquired Holosofx to extend its portfolio of business integration infrastructure software. Industry analysts estimate that companies spend 40 percent of their information technology budgets on integration, including integrating their various business processes such as those for managing inventory, customer relations and supply chains. IDC reports that the opportunity for business integration technology will hit $4 billion by 2005.

Holosofx's software complements IBM's WebSphere integration software portfolio and expands the breadth of the IBM integration portfolio. Holosofx's business process modeling and monitoring tools, as part of IBM's WebSphere Business Integration platform, will help customers implement powerful business integration solutions. For example, global financial institutions have a requirement for straight through processing for settling payments and insurance companies need to create compliance programs under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

With the addition of Holosofx products, IBM's WebSphere Business Integration platform will provide end-to-end capability for a customer to design, deploy, monitor and improve business processes across the enterprise and with its business partners.

"Our customers want business tools that model and monitor their business processes without requiring programming skills, so they can focus on automating cross-application business processes to reduce costs and rapidly deliver return on investment," said Ambuj Goyal, general manager, Solutions and Strategy, IBM Software Group. "By adding Holosofx to the WebSphere Business Integration portfolio, IBM's ability to deliver on this requirement is unmatched in terms of leadership and vision."

IBM and Holosofx have had a business relationship since 1998 and with this acquisition IBM continues its momentum and leadership in business integration. In the second quarter, WebSphere Business Integration software more than doubled in revenue year to year and Siebel Systems recently chose to license WebSphere Business Integration software components.

This is the third acquisition in the integration space by IBM Software Group in the last nine months. IBM closed its acquisition of CrossWorlds Software for business process integration in January, 2002, its acquisition of Metamerge for directory integration in June and now Holosofx for business process modeling and monitoring.

"Customer support has been our highest priority since Holosofx's inception and today's announcement will move that support to a new level. WebSphere Business Integration, including Holosofx software, will provide unprecedented capabilities and opportunities for our customers," said Hassan Khorshid, CEO and founder, Holosofx. "The benefits to our customers in many countries and industries will be critical as they implement of state-of-the-art integration solutions."

Based in El Segundo, California, Holosofx was founded in 1990 and its customers include Fortune 1000 and leading international companies such as Aetna US Healthcare, CNA Life, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, National Australia Bank Group, Telstra, Toyota and Wachovia Bank. It operates a software development lab in Cairo, Egypt.